In the heat of the discussion of the tragic killings at Sandy Hook Elementary (and so many more before it), one mom shared with me her frustration about gun control laws as it pertained to her own mentally ill child.

Her son asked if he could put himself on a “no-sell” list so that no one could sell a firearm to him the next time he had a psychotic break and had lost touch with reality. She found that no such voluntary “no-sell” list exists. To get on such a list you would have already had to commit a crime by which time it is too late. And even then, it turns out, even AFTER committing a crime, you can appeal to be able to buy a gun again.

So what is this mom or any other parent of a mentally ill person to do? In contrast with Nancy Lanza, the mother of the 20-year-old shooter Adam Lanza, she has done her best to keep guns away from her child. She does not have them in the house. But the world is a big place. Can’t we help her help her son? Can’t we help her son help himself?

Josh Hurwitz at the Huffington Post wrote an eye-opening piece in the wake of the Aurora, Colorado shooting by the mentally ill James Holmes: Aurora’s hard truth: mental health screening for gun buyers is virtually non-existent. As Hurwitz points out, Americans can buy firearms through private sales in more than 40 states without any screenings. Even the places that put restrictions on the mentally ill purchasing firearms do it for very few and even then only temporarily. For instance, you cannot get a firearm if you have been involuntarily committed to a mental institution by a court or other lawful authority (something which doesn’t even happen to most people with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia), but if you went into the mental institution voluntarily, you don’t even have to wait.

Plus, while being committed involuntarily used to preclude a gun purchase for life, federal laws have procedures that allow individuals to restore their right to purchase or possess guns. And yes, we’re talking about felons, too; they can go through a procedure to regain their right to buy guns with chilling results as this New York Times story from last year demonstrates.

James Holmes was under the care of a psychiatrist who specialized in schizophrenia before he shot and killed so many in that Aurora, Co. movie theater this summer and Jared Loughner, who killed six and wounded 12 others including former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Ariz. last year, was determined by the court to have paranoid schizophrenia. Neither had a problem purchasing guns.

Hurwitz notes that it’s been almost 45 years since federal legislators defined mental health disqualifications for gun buyers in the Gun Control Act of 1968. If we can revisit the USDA standards to get healthier lunches in our schools as we did this year, making the first changes in 15 years, surely we can revisit the Gun Control Act of 1968 to make our schools safer places for our kids to be.